Magical Multiple Choice: A Philly 10k Report

If you came here looking for the latest decklist or how to SB I'm afraid you've come to the wrong place. If you want a play-by-play of an event go watch one of the million people taping themselves playing. The following is a test (and my first tournament report if you couldn't tell).

At around midnight on Tuesday you get an out-of-the-blue Facebook message from Tom Dixon asking if you have a driver's license. Curious as to what could spur such a question you inform him that you do have such an instrument but have never actually driven a car. He wasn't surprised but also didn't care since he only required a body with a license to be in the car (he only has a permit) with him to an entry-free Standard 10k and Modern 2k (the structure of the event was odd; the actual 10k was a 32-person invite-only event with the T8 from a sealed event and T24 from a Standard event receiving invites). As a reward for being an extra body you are able to stay at his friend's (Ryan Glackin) house for the event. You:

2 is clearly the correct play. You can't allow others to know of how little value your time is actually worth and how little you have to do on your weekends.

After durdling on your decision for a day you agree to go along with him and decide to leave on Friday in order to enter the sealed tournament as well. After knowing that you would be playing in the new Standard and without a clue on what to play you ask around on IRC (#magic-league on solidIRC come join us!) for ideas and you immediately receive a reply from Karol Szafraski (kaesh on IRC ksh on modo) who is essentially the Patrick Sullivan of Poland and suggests the following Mono-Red list:

Lands (25)

Spells (15)

Sideboard

Immediately dismiss anything that starts with >20 Mountains as a deck for small children

Test it thoroughly

Decide to commit to playing the list without doing any work

2 I tested with level 4 pro Christian Calcano for hours. For those who have not had the privilege of testing with Calcano it's a unique experience: you will never come across someone who tilts so hard when losing a game in testing. This led to something Calcano is famous for: the Facebook audible.

However 1 will also be accepted as correct as that was the position taken by PV:

You aren't particularly happy to be sleeving up Mountains (you're known for playing mostly Islands and Swamps) so when Eduardo Borges (shooter on IRC EdB on modo) suggested the following deck you are pretty excited to give it a try:

All of the above but it started at 2 (“Omg how does this deck ever lose!”) went on to 3 (“Calcano how can we not play this? No one will ever see it coming.”) to 1 (“Lauren Lee please save me from my idiocy and play decks against me.”). Although I only won one game in my set against Lauren (she played G/W Humans and U/B Control) I did get to make an interesting sequence of plays (in the one game I won):

Play Zelda for three hours then cram your two Nightmare Before Christmas shirts a pair of jeans and various other items into a bag and hope for the best.

Have someone else pack for you.

2. Yes I am emo and I somehow managed to pack everything important.

After arriving at Tom's house we're quickly off to Philly in order to play in the Friday sealed event. When you open your pool you think it's insane and quickly get off to a 2-0 start.

In round 3 you play against Gerard Fabiano and lose because you make more misplays than you can count and you then go on to quickly lose round 4; now out of top 8 contention you:

Continue playing need to maximize your Planeswalker Points.

Drop.

1. You lose round 5 you:

Continue playing need to maximize your Planeswalker Points.

Drop.

1. You lose round 6 you:

Continue playing need to maximize your Planeswalker Points.

Drop.

1. You lose round 7.

Congratulations! You just stayed in three extra rounds to get Planeswalker Points and failed #playingisgoodwinningisbetter.

After the tournament is over you make sure to head over to the Wawa in order to get a frozen lemonade which are the best things on earth. Tom Dixon tries to dissuade you of this opinion listing many things (some inappropriate for a family website) which are better but you just insist he's wrong (and he is).

Upon arriving at Ryan's house (which had one of the most incredible collections of classic video games you've ever seen /drool) Tom claims the couch and you eventually fall asleep in the chair (which you find out is a recliner on the way home).

Turnout the next day was much lower than you expect for a free 10k (only 210 players) but it was still eight rounds with the top 24 making it to the single-elimination portion which made 6-2 the minimum to make the top 24 (with some 6-2s not making the cut).

Say it's a 2/2 and not explicitly mention that it doesn't have a -1/-1 counter.

Tell him when he plays Clasp that he won't be able to proliferate -1/-1 counters since it and a +1/+1 counter essentially cancel out.

2 you're not scum. Sadly your opponent doesn't believe you and taps out turn 4 to attempt to proliferate the -1/-1 counter at which point a judge has to be called to sort things out. You eventually win the match.

After a round 1 win you:

Walk to Wawa with Christian Calcano to get a frozen lemonade.

Walk around the tournament hall to scope out the metagame.

1 not even close. In an unexpected turn of events you end up getting third wheeled by Calcano at the Wawa when he meets a girl he's in <3 with and leaves you to “go for a walk” with the instruction to text him when the round ends. #firsttimeforeverything.

Round 2 was uneventful and in round 3 you are paired against (almost) Mono-Green Dungrove Elder. In game 1 the board is:

In game 2 you have a Koth on five counters when your opponent with five Forests and a Mountain (!?) plays a Kessig Wolf Run to kill you. He says “good game” and extends his hand. You:

Shake his hand back.

Refuse the handshake and mimimi.

2 remember that comment before about not being scum? It was a complete lie.

You have no recollection of what you played in round 4 or 5 (I think there was another U/B Infect deck and maybe a Humans deck) but get paired vs. Tim Landale in round 6 for a feature match. You can watch the match here. ("There's a rare smile from Chris Mascioli. Often seen calling suicide hotlines." —BDM) I want to focus on my turn 5 and Landale's turn 6 to demonstrate a few points. The board is:

5 is terrible so let's eliminate that one right away. Next we have to dismiss 1 and 2. If you choose option 1 he would let Elspeth die (he can't block with two tokens or he won't be able to keep Koth off 5 due to Shrine) and play his Wurmcoil on turn 6 at a relatively safe seven life; if you choose option 2 he blocks with one token and on his turn will be able to make three tokens or play his Wurmcoil and gain 2 life (going to 9). Both of these situations allow Tim to stabilize and lead to the game spiraling out of your control.

Option 3 presents Tim with a choice: Block both and possibly allow Koth to go ultimate or block just the 4/4 and risk your opponent having a one-drop or burn spell allowing Shrine to become lethal; since we have no action in hand being called on our bluff here leads to Koth going back down to four on Tim's turn and probably us losing the game.

Option 4 on the other hand forces Tim to block the 4/4 and on Tim's turn allows us to block one token and shoot the other with Shrine allowing Koth to remain on five counters and go ultimate on our turn. The best possible play is the one that gives us the greatest chance of going ultimate with Koth so option d is the best choice all things considered.

After making a terrible play on my turn I am rather tilted during Tim's turn 6 but he's presented with an interesting choice on his turn as well. He can:

Attack Koth with one token.

Attack Koth with both tokens.

He chose 1 which is incorrect. Luckily for him I was so tilted by how I played last turn that I completely blanked on using Shrine to kill his attacker allowed Koth to go to four and lost the game (and match). Watching this game on video was quite painful :( Punt re-punt re-re-punt; basically a game of soccer.

However bad that misplay may be narutozrasengan on YouTube found the real mistake:

Dear god so many misplays game 3 with Koth from Chris....... 3 times he would untap a mountain he just played and either attacked or tapped it for mana which is illegal and I'm surprised no one even his opponent didn't catch it.. =

When someone pointed out how little technical things like this matter (we're not on modo after all—I always just used the Mountain closest to me out of convenience) he made sure to tell us why he cared so much:

Personally it's insulting since I didn't top 32 this event yet someone who doesn't know how to play his own card did. So forgive me for being a little annoyed at watching this and trying to point out that that series of plays shouldn't have occurred.

My advice for narutozrasengan (his profile says his name is Dylan) is that maybe the reason you didn't top 32 the event was that instead of noticing the actual mistakes I made during the course of the match (which were pretty “insulting”) you worry about stupid meaningless sh*t like which land I untapped. For what it's worth.

A brief aside on the state of coverage:

Magic commentary is not nearly play-centered enough; it's very heavy on filler/making statements that are patently obvious but insightful sounding. There's almost never a serious examination of the options presented to a player during each turn and what their line of play indicates. I don't really know how to improve this or if my vision is even an improvement but I find most coverage not helpful for me (and watch on mute pretty frequently). All three commentators missed my bad attack Tim's bad attack and my not popping Shrine to punish his bad attack. SCGLive commentary on the whole is weaker than GGsLive (except for the one week where Gavin and Ari were in the booth that was awesome) as a number of the commentators are relatively clueless.

In round 7 you're paired against Level 2 judge Alex Bastecki who is playing R/G Werewolves (you can tell this story is going to be good already). On around turn 5-6 (with four Werewolves unflipped in play) he casts:

Having not played very much with the new set you're unsure what this card does. You:

Ask your opponent what the card does.

Call a judge and ask for the oracle text.

2 but you choose 1.

Changing roles for a second…

You play a foreign Full Moon's Rising (in Constructed) and your opponent asks what it does. You (all of the following choices are legal):
a) Tell them the full text.
b) Tell them to call a judge.
c) Tell them only that it gives +1/+0 and trample.

First let's see what people on Facebook said to the aforementioned question:

So we have a general consensus that while all answers are legal (although there was some disagreement about this at first) there's a “gentlemen's agreement” that 3 is socially unacceptable. However a problem arises when this agreement is breached (just like Legacy was “broken” by people playing Mystical Tutor decks) that an answer which is unintuitive (not fully answering the question) is fully legal and encouraged by the communications guidelines. I don't understand the rationale for allowing such half-answers especially given how rulings on out of order sequencing are handled. It is according to the DCI more skill-testing to have every card's Oracle text memorized than knowing that if you don't activate Inkmoth Nexus before blockers you technically shouldn't be able to block. Granted you are allowed to call a judge to get the Oracle text of a foreign card but forcing a player to call a judge every time an opponent plays a foreign card (since you can never trust an opponent to answer fully) just leads to tournament delays. I see no rationale to make the Oracle text of a card derived information; an opponent should not have to answer (because he might not accurately know the Oracle text of a card) but they should not be able to provide information under the guise of being helpful when they're just doing so to f*** you over and be a scumbag. Please please comment if you have any thoughts on this matter or can provide some logical explanation for why this policy exists especially in regard to foreign cards.

If you couldn't tell from all of this my opponent chose 3 and three turns later when I cast a Brimstone Volley on his Mayor of Avabruck he sacrificed his Full Moon's Rising to regenerate it. I lost that game but not solely due to him being a douche (he had flipped Werewolves with Moonmist so match is pretty bad for me after this).

You end up winning the match despite losing game 1. At the end of game 3 Alex says “good game” and extends his hand. You:

Tell him to go f*** himself and laugh at him.

Accept the handshake and say good game.

Decide that you don't want the USC warning from a judge and just comment about how justice exists and how he's scum.

3 although I did consider 1 for a bit (2 NEVER even crossed my mind). Fact: Alex is scum for doing what he did and I have no problem telling him this. Although it's legal that doesn't give you an excuse for doing it especially in a game where he was so astronomically ahead at the time of the incident (he's also a level 2 judge; he's supposed to be acting as the face of organized play even when not in uniform).

If your only defense for an action is “it's legal” you're most likely standing on some shaky ethical ground. He even accepted my friend request on FB and then didn't give his reasoning on why he made the choice he did on the screenshot I posted earlier; guess he was too ashamed to even try when some of the best in the game had already come out against him.

As you're on Facebook taking screenshots you notice today is 4 October which would have been the year anniversary of your last failed relationship (ended by a text message no less). You:

Don't think about it; you're over it.

Stalk her FB profile mad that she seems unaffected by what happened.

2 you're pathetic.

The standings go up after round 7 and you're a coin flip to make the top 24 even if you win round 8 (Did I mention that my round 3 opponent was bad? Well he was). Luckily for you the TC put that the tournament was supposed to be nine rounds in DCIReporter so the last round is not paired by standings and you get paired up against a 5-1-1 with Solar Flare. You split games 1 and 2 and are on the draw for game 3. You:

Just play it out.

Offer a 5% split with your opponent for the loser since the winner will most likely cash.

2. I am extremely risk averse so I offer the split. He refuses and I take this as an omen since if I've learned anything from modo the person who refuses the split always loses. I easily win game 3 after he mulls to four.

Standings after round 8 are posted and I come in 24th making it over three other 6-2s (one of which had higher breakers than I did coming into the round thanks Pastimes!). Now that I've made it to the 32-person single-elimination event I'm allowed to change my deck based on my observations from the day:

Reckless Waif is awful. It's great when it flips on turn 2 but most decks have a way to stop that from happening so you can't really rely on it ever being more than a 1/1 for R.

Brimstone Volley is awful. It's a burn spell where you don't know (or even control) how much damage it deals. Unreliable cards are not good for decks that need to extract as much value as possible from every card.

Throughout the course of the event Steve Sadin and I were working out ideas for our finalized list (The story of how we ended up with 24 lands is described in the above coverage video. Yes that actually happened) and started out with all sorts of weird numbers and cards (we had three Galvanic Blast [although Steve on principle was going to play Shock instead] and three Chandra's Phoenix). However when I finished my round 8 I saw Steve talking to Patrick Sullivan and I promised myself that I would play whatever final 75 they came up with and not talk myself out of it for some card I liked more.

Of course I walked over and asked what happened to the three Batterskull and the fourth Manic Vandal in the sideboard and was told “Oh we replaced those with four Curse of the Pierced Heart. The dealer over there at the end has them and he wouldn't even take my money when I bought four.” I once promised a girl I would fly 9000 miles for her and what I was now committed to makes this seem reasonable.

Besides the addition of Curse to the sideboard all the other changes seemed awesome: Brimstone Volley had been replaced with Volt Charge; Reckless Waif had become Furnace Scamp; and three Devil's Play along with the 25th land had become four Geistflame. These changes almost perfectly mirrored my thoughts about the deck and I registered the following 75 for the single-elimination portion of the event:

Planeswalkers (4)

Lands (24)

Spells (16)

Sideboard

The most difficult thing about running this list was obtaining four Volt Charge as not one dealer on site had any. I quickly found someone with three and was able to trade an Obstinate Baloth for them but finding the fourth was proving to be a Herculean task. I finally found someone with a foil Volt Charge who offered to sell it to me for $2.50. I snap accepted and when he went back to get it from his binder he refused to move it at the price we agreed on since apparently I “refused to concede to his friends at PTQs when I couldn't T8” and I even did so “multiple times” and he now wanted $5.00 for it. Besides being blatantly untrue (I have never [before PWPs] stayed in a PTQ after I was not in T8 contention) he cost himself $2.50 since I found someone else to sell me a normal one at $1.00 (still got ripped off :( ).

In the top 32 you're paired against a friend Dave Shiels who is on Solar Flare. You feel like the match is in your favor but also know that Shiels is a better player than you. The prize structure is such that the loser receives $75.00 and the winner is guaranteed $175.00. You:

Offer some sort of split.

Play it out.

I'm super risk averse so I offer a split and we agree on $25.00 to the loser (huge money at stake :P). I have the nuts (and am on the play) in game 1.

1 hand has most of what you're looking for and you have four draw steps to hit two lands to be able to play Koth on turn 4 (and even if you don't you still have things to do). I don't play a turn 4 Koth but the game ends up revolving around Shiels having multiple Lilianas and me using my Curses (I drew a second one on turn 3) to control (since you can choose to hit the walker) his Lilianas basically allowing me to choose which ability was being used each turn.

In the top 16 you're paired against Neo Caw-Blade and since the prize difference between T16 and T8 is $200.00 you:

Offer a split with $50.00 to the loser.

Play it out as your opponent seems a bit weak.

1 but he refuses the split. In game 3 he mulls to five and loses. The modo split rule holds.

The Top 8 is going to start the next day and you make sure to pick up a frozen lemonade from Wawa on the way back to the place you're staying. You go 1-1 in Ascension (5th or 6th game lifetime) vs. Tom who makes sure to tell you how badly he's going to crush you before you start playing (Lauren Lee told me the same thing and then lost two in a row justice) and you awkwardly sleep in the same chair as last night (still don't know it reclines).

You arrive on site and are paired against the other Mono Red player (who is splashing green for Kessig Wolf Run). The prize structure is $375 for T8 and $750 for T4. You:

Offer to split.

Play it out.

2 the only match I was super confident in was the mirror especially against a less consistent version of my deck. I draw a double Shrine hand in game 1 and win and lose game 2 to a combination of multiple Heroes and Phoenixes.

It's game 3 and you have the option of playing or drawing (your opponent chose to play in games 1 and 2). You:

Choose to play.

Choose to draw.

2 the mirror usually ends up being a grind fest with Shrine Koth and Refugee as your trumps. You want to maximize how much removal you draw and want to make sure you hit your trumps more consistently. The one card you lose from choosing to play (or even more if you have to mulligan) is pretty huge since the tempo you gain from playing first is not particularly relevant given the configuration of your deck (with very few creatures) post-sb. I win due to tight play (and a very timely Koth) even though he had Refugee advantage.

Right after your T8 round is finished you sign up for the free Modern 2k but since you're going to be forced to take a round 1 loss (due to playing in the T4 of the Standard event) you decide to register your Standard deck just to get some participation points.

The top 4 is U/W U/B Puresteel Paladin and you; all four players agree to a split of $1500.00 but we also want to play it out so Tim can have a chance of getting the bonus $1000.00 for winning as a member of a team. Shawn Doherty informs us that the single-elimination event is not sanctioned and if we agree to a split the tournament ends which means Tim would not be able to play for the bonus money and which ends the possibility of a split. However it ends up that the event was sanctioned and we were outright lied to by Doherty. Typical incompetence.

You're paired versus the only player in the top 4 you don't know and he's playing U/B. You both agree to a split where the loser gets $250.00 (so we both walk away with a grand) and you mull to five (on the draw) in game 2. The board is:

You:

Cast the Shrine.

Play a land and pass.

I think the answer is 2 but wouldn't fault you for being more aggressive and picking 1. My reasoning behind choice 2 is that I am committing to casting Shrine on turn 3 regardless of what he does on his turn 3 and I have to assume he had Lilianas in his deck so there is a very strong possibility he's going to be tapping out next turn. By waiting a turn you also rob him of the ability to Leak your Shrine (he's around 44% to have Mana Leak here) and even if he doesn't tap out on turn 3 you've gained a significant amount of tempo by not allowing him to Leak on turn 2 which would normally be a turn where he doesn't even have to choose to not do something proactive.

He ends up tapping out on turn 3 for Liliana but is able to race the Shrine with Grave Titan by one turn. I then get steamrolled so badly game 2 that there's nothing to even talk about.

After the Standard event is over you're $1000.00 richer but still want to play a few rounds of the Modern event since you can't leave until it's over as your driver is playing in the event as well. You end up going 3-3 in played matches (5 out of 6 matches being real decks with the joke being a G/U Mill deck) and regret your decision to not update the list to be more Modern compatible as you discover it seems there's an opening for a fast red deck in the current Modern metagame. However you do get to watch

and

dominate the T8. I think there was 32 of each in the top 8 decks. New banning?

With the event over you finally leave to return home and get a good night's sleep in an actual bed.

QUOTES (blatantly stole this idea from Ted Knutson):

Jed Taccad comes up to Josh Jacobson at PT Philly and starts talking about the T8. Josh obviously (and normally) hung over replies "Wow that's a lot of people you need to add as Facebook friends now." Jed stutters and walks away.

[17:15:53] We have great news!
[17:15:53]
[17:15:53]
[17:15:53] About you eduardobsg:
[17:15:53] Your personality: Really great
[17:15:53] How bad girls want you: So bad
[17:16:03] lol
[17:16:19] i got that email too :P

About Chris Mascioli

Chris Mascioli is a "criminally underrated Magic Online ringer" from New York who qualified for PT Amsterdam (made Day 2) in 2010 and Nagoya in 2011. If you haven't heard of him before in a Magical context, you probably know of his trip across the world to New Zealand. When not playing Magic Online, he handles his responsibilities as the unofficial president of the unofficial PV Fan Club.